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St. Tammany finance director warns public-safety budgets could fall to about 40% without new revenue
Summary
Annie Perkins, St. Tammany Parish director of finance, says the parish faces a critical funding gap: without a new revenue source by Dec. 12, public-safety and criminal-justice budgets could shrink to roughly 40% of their 2025 levels, with staffing and court operations most at risk.
Annie Perkins, director of finance for St. Tammany Parish government, warned that the parish faces an urgent revenue shortfall that could drastically reduce public-safety funding next year.
"If we do not have another source of revenue, then, unfortunately, the budgets for our public safety agencies for the criminal justice system for next year will be reduced to 40% of what they received in 2025," Perkins said, stressing that the cuts would chiefly affect staffing and services.
Perkins told host Michael on the Beyond the Ballot podcast that there are no operational offsets left to cover those reductions: "There is no other money. There are no other sources that we can move to fund this." She said prior reliance on one-time disaster and federal funds is exhausted and that decisions must be made by voters or via new revenue streams to avoid deep service impacts.
The finance director described likely consequences: reductions in personnel and benefits, delays in court processing, and the loss of a speedy-trial capacity. Perkins said about 90% of the relevant agency budgets are personnel costs and that staffing losses would have cascading effects on day-to-day public safety operations.
